Apple has a secret team working to make the iPhone's camera a portal to augmented reality

Apple is integrating
augmented reality technology into the iPhone’s camera app, a
person familiar with the matter told Business
Insider.

The effort, which involves teams from several acquired
startups, reflects Apple’s near-term desire to put augmented
reality technology into consumers' hands even as it develops
special glasses that could eventually change the way people
perceive their surroundings.

Apple also recently hired an expert in head-mounted
displays, in the latest sign of its longer-term glasses
initiative.

Augmented reality is an exploding field in technology in
which digital objects are superimposed onto the real world. A
view of a city street for instance can be enriched with a
map for directions, a coupon for a nearby store or an animated
character in a video game.

The ultimate goal is a pair of smart glasses, and companies
including Google,
Microsoft,
Facebook, Apple and
Snapchat are all actively developing or exploring such a
product. But in the near-term most popular augmented reality
applications will take place on a smartphone, as was the case
with this summer’s
smash hit Pokemon Go app.

Point and recognize

By adding AR technology into the iPhone’s camera software, Apple
wants consumers to be able to point the phone at a real-world
object and have it be recognized, according to Kris Kolo,
director of the AR/VR Association and a board member of Flyby
Media, an AR startup that was acquired by Apple earlier this
year. That would require creating or licensing a database of
3D objects.

Another early feature for Apple's AR integration into the camera
app could be to recognize and manipulate people's faces. Apple
integrated facial recognition technology into the photos app in
the most recent version of its iOS software, and purchased
FaceShift, a company with similar technology in 2015.

Apple has acquired several AR and virtual reality technology
companies in recent years including Metaio, in February 2014 and
Flyby Media in January 2016. The employees from both groups
are now working in Apple’s camera group.

Eventually, the person said, after the AR features are
built into the iPhone camera app, Apple will release the
technology behind them as an SDK for app developers, like it did
with its Touch ID fingerprint sensor. At that point, Apple will
become a competitor to companies like Vuforia and
Blippar.

Glass backward

Apple is also working on a pair of skinny, stylish smart glasses
that pairs to an iPhone to display contextual information,
Bloomberg reported on Monday and sources have told Business
Insider.

However, the timeline for the device is far into the future —
2018 or later, according to the Bloomberg report.

But there are some signs that the project has moved out of the
exploration labs and into a more advanced stage in which
Apple is exploring production.

John Border, who lists his title as "senior optics manufacturing
exploration engineer," joined Apple in September, according to
his LinkedIn profile. Border's bio describes him as a
"subject matter expert in the fields of head-worn displays,
plastic optics manufacturing, camera systems and image
sensors."

Before joining Apple, he was chief engineer at Osterhout Design
Group, a small 50-person company based in San Francisco.

ODG is notable as one of the few companies currently demoing a
fully functional pair of smart glasses. ODG sells a device called
the R-7
Smartglasses that uses "3D stereoscopic ultra-transparent
see-thru HD displays" to superimpose computer graphics into the
real world.

Take a look at their tech for yourself:

If you know anything about Apple's AR project, email the
author at kleswing@businessinsider.com.